


Brief life in an exhausted universe

by Theta Sigma (Kiriahtan)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Loki fanzine contribution, Post Infinity War, Ragnarok, kid!loki, search of the infinity stones, this is a weird headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 01:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17613044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiriahtan/pseuds/Theta%20Sigma
Summary: The Ragnarok was doomed to happen, again and again. In this Ragnarok when Thanos snapped his fingers, Loki wakes up as a child in the darkness at the bottom of Yggdrasil.





	Brief life in an exhausted universe

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, my name is Theta Sigma (or Kiriahtan) and this is the piece I wrote for the spanish fanzine of Loki "More than a trickster" (you can find it in twitter @/LokiFanzine). As the zine is already out I decided to upload my work here and I decided to do it in english so only the people with the physical (or digital) zine had the original version. I also wanted to more people to read it because I really like how this turn out!  
> This is a bit weird headcanon mixing things from the comics and the MCU. It's placed on the MCU, post Infinity War I. And I hope you like it!
> 
> Special thanks to Mary Vogel for being my beta this time <3

The Ragnarok was doomed to happen, again and again. It had already happened several times before and would happen many more in the future. But this time it was Hela and it was the exile ship and it was Thor, one-eyed as a fateful successor of the Father of All —how much of this was a succession and how much was a transmutation?—  and it was different. The Ragnarok hadn't come completely and Loki, who wasn't fully Asgardian only but he was, who wasn't fully a god only but he was, understood this when he saw  the death dressed in violet skin step on the ship.

 _This_ was the real Ragnarok and it wouldn't be easy nor quick.

Before jumping over it, Loki turned to look at Thor. The part of him that walked among the shadows, the part of him that Heimdall had never seen, hoped his brother would understand with that look, but he knew Thor would not. At the end of the day he wasn't really the Father of All. Luckily.

 

 

The child awoke surrounded by ruin and death, his body shocked by a spasm in search  for air like someone who awakes  from a nightmare, except  that he was nobody before he woke up. His memory and his life were empty, newborn, and in the unknown and dark realms at the bottom of Yggdrasil, he was alone. He crawled between the darkness and the ice until he found the first inhabitants of those lands. This took him long enough to clarify his existence —which was still empty, though. He didn't know who he was or what he was doing there. The child only knew one single thing and that was what he asked the giants when he found them:

"Who is _Thor_?"

"Thor?" All the ice heads turned to him with wrath. The child knew he had found something.

The child fled from that kingdom, stealing the prince's crown and a single dagger. The crown had two golden horns and the child liked the way it fitted his head, with magic. The dagger was just to defend himself and because he suspected that Thor did not have many friends.

As he ascended the Tree of Worlds he understood that what Thor had was so many enemies. And they were deserved. Thor had travelled all over the tree defeating villains, without mercy. Now the child had to climb the tree avoiding those same villains.

For each place where they cursed the name of Thor, more was the child wanting to find him.

 

 

And when he did, Thor wasn't alone, which caught the child off guard but didn’t surprised him because Thor had always been bright sun surrounded by people. But this time several of these friends were pointing weapons at the child so he raised his hands. He didn’t recognize what kind of weapon many of those were, but he absolutely knew they were weapons by the way they brandished them. 

"I am looking for Thor" said the child, calmly.

"And why would you do that?" asked one of them.

The whole group painted a horrible picture. They seemed to have lost too much.

"Loki?" The giant who wasn't a giant emerged from the group by moving away his allies and the child knew then that he had finally found him.

The mighty Thor, of whom he had heard so many legends and whose name had been blamed so many times. And the mighty Thor fell on his knees before him without further words and hugged him, shedding tears on his shoulder.

—That image will haunt him forever, shrinking his stomach every time he remembers it—.

"I thought you dead. I almost believe it this time," Thor confessed, laughing between tears.

The child understood then: he was _really_ dead. Somehow he had returned and his name was Loki but he wasn't the same Loki who had died in front of his brother. He had no memory of that and he didn't know why the mighty Thor was crying over his shoulder.

Thor didn't answer his questions. No matter that Loki was very quiet waiting to the very moment when Thor's guard was down to ask, the giant just said he was glad that he was there. Even if Loki caught him looking at him with something in his eyes that he was too young to understand.

—Nostalgia, misfortune, the regret of knowledge in one eye that wasn't his own and that the patch he should be wearing couldn’t cover even if it tried.—.  

What Loki discovered was all that group of heroes had lost: the universe had been broken in half and they were looking for a way to fix it, even though  they had been already defeated. It was a useless task but the child stayed with them. His homeland, he discovered, had also disappeared. 

"You're the only one I have left" said Thor, leaning a hand on the child's head with that look again. That look the child didn't fully understand and in which he preferred not to think so much —but in middle of the night he know what that look meant.

In middle of the night the child dreamed of the old Loki: taller, thinner, craftier. And more hated. That's why the heroes had pointed their weapons against him. If it hadn't been for Thor, Loki knew that he’d been thrown out a long time ago. In the middle of the night the child saw Loki's faces and he could see the resemblance.

He suspected that this would be the same even if he had a homeland somewhere.

So, when Thor carried him on his shoulders, Loki gripped to where there was no more braided hair of the color of the sun in the wheat, only bloody straw. And when Thor walked away and no one said anything, Loki swelled his chest to claim that his brother was the best person in the universe.

This meant: I do not fear you, nor owed you anything. He meant this to the Loki you all knew. I exist despite of him. 

"I HATE YOU!" The child shouted at the ancient Loki in the face, from the highest peak inside his own dreams.

Whatever that Loki tried to say to him in his sleep, he rejected it. The old god of mischief, who always had one more trick in his sleeves, had made him return from death. He had made him to carry with all his stigmas. He had saved his own life but later he didn't bother to recover it. Therefore Loki hated him.

 

 

Until the green stone stood before his hands. Recovering it seemed impossible. Thanos no longer needed them and he had not bothered when they tried to find them; but it wasn't easy. The group of heroes had lost so much and he was there just because Thor was. He didn't believe in that task, he didn't know the universe before its break in two.

And now the gem was in his hands.

The green gem had the power of the clock when he grabbed it and jumped away at the last minute. The plan had been his, no one had believed in it and they had only given him a chance because Thor did. Loki had thus decided that it would work. He wouldn't disappoint his brother and he would shut everyone's mouth. This plan would be a real hoax and not the one of the old man in his dreams to death.

"Thor!" he called him between the scuffle.

"Now!" shouted Stark from the other side, with the guidance of someone who wasn't there.

Loki threw the real gem towards his brother, instead of the false one that the scavengers after them believed he had.

For a second it seemed that they wouldn't make it and then Thor reached the gem. They hadn't spoken about that part but Loki understood what the others —and Thor— tried to do. Behind his back.

It wasn't easy to deceive the god of deceit.

Thor's gaze was an apology and a farewell.

The child swallowed. He knew this was going to happen and yet there were too many things he still wanted to say, he still wanted to live. He guessed the old man in his dream would be satisfied.

The Stormbreaker fell and the universe came back.

I forgive you, I'm glad I met you, were the last thing he didn’t have time to say.

 

Until the next Ragnarok, brother.


End file.
